Dear Mattbuck,
From the past many days I have been trying to upload several pictures in various Wikipedia pages but somehow I'm facing copyright issues on my uploads. I just wanted to know, how can I 'create' pictures of people (such as Meena Kumari) who have died several years ago? I feel its quite obvious that I'll fetch their pictures either from print media or electronic media. So how should I upload more pictures without any copyright violation? Vrishchik (talk) 16:46, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Vrishchik, you should start by reading Commons:Licensing - this has a good overview. Put simply, if the photo is not one you took yourself, then it either needs to be so old that it has fallen into the public domain (this usually happens 70 years after the death of the photographer) or it needs to be explicitly released under a free licence. This means that images you find in books or online are almost certainly not acceptable. If you want to use these images for a Wikipedia article, and the subject is dead, you may be able to upload images to that Wikipedia as "fair use", however not all Wikipedias allow fair use (for instance English Wikipedia does but German Wikipedia doesn't). Fair use images are not allowed on Commons. -mattbuck(Talk) 00:16, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Some contents have been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether they should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at their entry.

If you created these pages, please note that the fact that they have been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with them, such as a copyright issue.

Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

Some contents have been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether they should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at their entry.

If you created these pages, please note that the fact that they have been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with them, such as a copyright issue.

Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

If you created this template, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it.

Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

You descided "keep" for this nomination for deletion in 2013. Meanwhile, the photo has been deleted from it's origin, Flickr, and so has, apparently, the photographer's gallery on Flickr. Would that make any difference in your opinion, e.g. concerning the depicted person's consent? I'm asking because we cannot identify nor contact the photographer nor the model anymore and there might have been a good reason to delete that stuff on Flickr? --Superbass (talk) 21:24, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Superbass, I confess I'm not sure. That DR was more based around the idea of the model being underage. If you feel it's problematic, start another DR. -mattbuck(Talk) 21:29, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi. I personally made a photo of Edward S. Walker Jr. in September 2006, edited it and uploaded it to Wiki giving all the necessary permissions. Now I have noticed that you have deleted it and the whole article has since then been missing a photo. Why? What rationale did you have? Can you fix your screwup? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mixer (talk • contribs) 22:12, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Mixer. Hello and welcome back. I have never before been asked about a deletion that happened seven years ago, so there's something new! This is what I was able to work out from looking at the logs and the filepage:

The file was deleted as a copyright violation. It had a big notice "(c) Mikko Vedru" on it, and there was no evidence that that that was you. Furthermore, it was found on Picasa where it was listed as All Rights Reserved, which is not something we allow on Commons.

If this is in error I apologise, we have a policy here of erring on the side of caution and deleting anything which looks iffy, but this was pretty clear-cut. -mattbuck(Talk) 06:17, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

That was one of my first contributions to Wiki and I haven't been following what is happening to the article - I assumed, that quality at least won't degrade. Recently I decided to check my history and remind myself of things I did in the very beginning of wiki and how well/bad my edits survived a decade.

The photo was fully mine. My equipment, my photography, my edit. Obviously, the copyright is also mine. It stays with me from the moment I created this work (and can't be transferred), regardless of whom I grant part of those rights (even if they are full exclusive material rights till the end of times). Picasa was my personal archive and I don't remember setting anything specific there (but then again it was 10 years ago). Maybe I didn't want people to take all photos from my personal gallery, but was totally fine with people using specific photos I granted wikipedia all needed rights. There also might have been an idea of "Wikipedia and people can use my photo however they want as long as I get the source attribution.

Can you undelete the photo? I don't seem to have an unedited version anymore.

Please also tell me what (if anything) I did wrong in that situation back then? How and what I should have done instead? How have the rules changed since then (e.g. I can't put my name on the photo anymore?)? What do I need to know for this not to happen again? -Mixer (talk) 12:47, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Mixer, there haven't been any changes to the way we handle such things in the past seven years. We generally frown on people adding watermarks to images as it reduces their usefulness. Images with watermarks are liable to be cropped to remove the watermark, or, if cropping is not possible due to positioning, just plain deleted. In this particular case, there was nothing to confirm that the uploader was Mikko Vedru, and when the same image was found elsewhere under a different licence it was assumed that the uploader here had simply copied it from Picasa and uploaded it without permission. We get that a lot.

As for your Wikipedia edits, once the image was transferred to Commons from Wikipedia, it became an issue for Commons. We take copyright seriously here, and so it wouldn't matter if it was used on every single Wikipedia page - if we thought it was a copyright violation, we would delete it.

How to fix this now: I've restored the file File:Edward walker.jpg, but have added a 7-day countdown to getting sufficient permissions. You need to make clear that User:Mixer is the same person as Mikko Vedru. Create a userpage or something. -mattbuck(Talk) 13:50, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

I created a user page, put my name in both Commons and En-wiki, as well as edited the photo page. Could you please make sure that I did everything correctly? -Mixer (talk) 04:23, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi! I spoke previously with the user Ronhjones about the images of bugreiros that were deleted, he told me to talk to you.
In order to be contextualized, you can see the discussion there, but in summary, I affirm that there is no reason for the exclusion, since according to Brazilian laws, unknown author works are public domain, I posted the link there, in addition, even if it were not, it is very likely that 70 years have passed since the death of the author.
Please, I ask you to reconsider the exclusion and sorry for bad english.

Hi Matt, among all those images uploaded last week there are a couple of hundred pictures of class 73s which have all be categorized as Category:British Rail Class 43. Do you have a quick way of moving them all to the correct category? Geof Sheppard (talk)

On 5 Oct 2014 you nominated a photo for deletion citing copyright infringement. Under UK law, any photograph taken from a public place is not illegal and the copyright rays with the author of the work (photograph). In nominating a photo for deletion because it contained an artwork, it follows therefore that all photos of artworks globally on Wikimedia ought to be deleted also on the same reasoning because those artworks (sculptures) are all copyright of the sculptors and any images of those sculptures should therefore have consent of the sculptor to be photographed. Since this is not the policy of Wikipedia or Wikimedia, my image of a sculpture was illegally deleted cutting incorrect application of Wikimedia policy and therefore the file should be restored. The content of the image is not a breach of copyright unless that content is copied by another person for their profit. Ashattock (talk) 18:58, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Ashattock I'm afraid you're mistaken about the law there. If you take a photo of, say, the cover of a magazine, while in a public place in the UK, that's a copyright violation because that work is not permanently situated in a public place. With artworks, the rule is that "graphic works", such as paintings, retain the copyright of the original author, while 3D things such as sculptures and buildings are not copyrighted. A better explanation can be found at COM:FOP#United Kingdom. -mattbuck(Talk) 19:16, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

If you created this file, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue.

Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

Hi Mattbuck, since you seem to know a lot about the subject of FOP, what do you think about uploading this photo to commons? I find the ornate door intriguing, but there is the recent addition of a two dimensional artwork. The new art has no real value without the surrounding old stones. Thanks for your time. --Judithcomm (talk) 16:37, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Judithcomm that looks fine to upload to me. I'd say the picture falls under COM:DM - the photo is still worthwhile without the artwork. A photo of the artwork alone would be a copyvio on FOP grounds however, assuming it's a mural and not graffiti. -mattbuck(Talk) 18:58, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. The painting is actually a work of art commissioned by a Bradford organisation. There are more works by the same artist throughout the area --Judithcomm (talk) 20:22, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

If you created this category, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for discussion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it. If the category is up for deletion because it has been superseded, consider the notion that although the category may be deleted, your hard work (which we all greatly appreciate) lives on in the new category.

In all cases, please do not take the category discussion personally. It is never intended as such. Thank you!

I was wondering if you could would be kind enough to update this excellent template which you created a few years ago (Template:ukt) to take into account a change in category naming. I am in the process of moving train interior categories from the "Train interiors of British Rail Class xxxs" to "British Rail Class xxx interiors" format, but unfortunately I do not know how to update your template correctly, and I don't want to ruin it.

Why are you doing this? And, given the template still references the old names, why the hell are you removing redirects? -mattbuck(Talk) 11:04, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi, made sure I moved all the files before removing redirects. I am also going through all the relevant templates and checking to make sure there are no broken links. I did raise a discussion on the main category page but no one replied. The reason I moved them was because all current Class subcategories are in the form of “British Rail Class xxx by line, operator” etc. so I thought I interiors should also start in the same format to look neater. I’m sorry if this was too abrupt, but I wasn’t aware how long I should wait for discussion. ElshadK (talk) 11:12, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

ElshadK, yeah, no one will ever check the main category page because no one watches catgeory pages. I suggest you bring any future large-scale changes to en:WT:UKRAIL, which is as close to a decision making body as we get.

Mattbuck, No, I won't be renaming the other categories such as interiors by operator. I only wanted to move the ones by class to neaten up the category pages for each class. So there will be no need to update the {{Tocint}} etc. Also, in the future, I will make sure to suggest any major changes in en:WT:UKRAIL. ElshadK (talk) 12:07, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Hello. This message is to inform you that a daily gallery in your userspace, User:Mattbuck/Railways, has failed. Due to software limitations, the bot has a hard upper-limit of about 6000 files per day (including overflow galleries), while your gallery had 18051 files.

This usually happens because a gallery is too broad, encompassing too many subcategories. Please review the logs here and request that a subcategory be excluded, or narrow your category choice(s).

Please make your request for removal within 4 days, or your gallery will be subject to removal.

You're receiving this message because you've previously contributed to the annual Wiki Loves Monuments contest in the UK. We'd be delighted if you would do so again this year and help record our local built environment for future generations.

If you created this file, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue.

Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

If you created this file, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue.

Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

If you created this project page, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it.

Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

BevinKacon, given that the reason I requested those be deleted was that the user made edits suggesting they wanted them deleted, I think that the user uploading them again obviates the previous deletion rationale. -mattbuck(Talk) 18:31, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. That's a great question, actually, and an important one, and you know, I'm glad you asked. It's my belief, you see, thatt it's important that people continue to ask important questions. So thank you. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 19:53, 19 May 2020 (UTC)